Monika Maron is a German author, formerly of the German Democratic Republic. She moved in 1951 from West to East Berlin with her stepfather, Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior. She studied theatre and spent time as a directing assistant and as a journalist. In the late 1970s, she began writing full-time in East Berlin. She left the GDR in 1988 with a three-year visa. After living in Hamburg, Germany, until 1992, she returned to a reunited Berlin, where she currently lives and writes. Her works deal to a large degree with confrontation with the past and explore the threats posed both by memory and isolation. Her prose is sparse, bleak, and lonely, conveying the sensitivity and desperation of her narrators. In 1992, she was distinguished with the renowned Kleist Prize, awarded annually to prominent German authors, and, in 2003, with the Friedrich H�lderlin Prize. 

January 1st, 1941 in Berlin (Age 83)